Never Better

Rhymesayers; 2009

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Punk rock is a genre that was largely formed on the mindset that anyone should be able to express themselves musically, regardless of talent. Hip-hop traditionally lives and dies by skills, and it widely rejects the idea that anyone can pick up a mic and rock a stage without putting in hard work and sweat and dedication to their craft. Any artist that tries to fuse those two worlds has to be more than aware of how tricky a dichotomy that has to be; Minneapolis punk-rap artist P.O.S. alludes to this by claiming that his performing name stands for both "Promise of Skill" and "Piece of Shit." If that's too confusing, "Pissed Off Stef" works fine; it's Stefon Alexander's biggest unifying factor.

It could also be the biggest barrier to enjoying his work, even though Never Better-- the third solo album from the member of the nine-person Doomtree collective-- is P.O.S.' tightest album yet. Everybody's supposed to be high on hope right now, however guarded and pragmatic a hope that it is. But with a lead-off track ("Let It Rattle") that scoffs via repurposed Nas lyrics that "They out for presidents to represent them/ You think a president could represent you?", Never Better sets a confrontational tone that makes the album a potentially rough listen. But that bristling anger is subtly infused with a smart-assed insight and a thing for folding pop culture touchstones into unrecognizable shapes.

P.O.S.' lyrics have more in common with allusive free-spitters like Aesop Rock and Rob Sonic than, say, Gym Class Heroes-- giving you the gist of an idea while leaving you to try and calculate the deeper meaning in all the supposedly disjointed phrases ricocheting off each other. Some of the more intense lyrical moments, like "Grave Shovel Let's Go" ("They turning in they grave/ We dig 'em up and rearrange, aim/ Take 'em out the way they came") and "The Brave and the Snake" ("Slip through the sidewalk/ Skip to the hard part/ Tip to the card shark/ Rip through the rampart"), seem to run almost entirely on the fumes of some random-thought anxiety, threatening to drown out any first-listen comprehension with a barrage of aggressive internal rhymes and his meter-defying flow.

But the further you sink into it, the more sense it makes, and you're able to more clearly pick out the themes-- the recession rhetoric of "Low Light Low Life"; the post-trauma love story of "Been Afraid"; the fuck-what-they-think defiance in "Purexed". Worn ground, maybe, but the language makes it spark. And all that abstraction makes the matter-of-fact details in the autobiographical "Out of Category"-- which takes its titular hook from Lil Wayne's verse on Birdman's "Neck of the Woods"-- stand out a lot more starkly. When P.O.S. reminisces over his coming of age as a black punk rock kid, he captures the identity crisis vividly: "Found his kin, brothers at school think he tryin' to rewrite skin/ Others are fools, never seen some shit like him."

As far as the aforementioned punk/rap contradictions, you might wind up forgetting that there are any in the first place. There's still some nods to punk rock, lyrically (a quote of Fugazi's "Five Corporations" in "Savion Glover") as well as in the guest personnel (None More Black's Jason Shevchuk shows up to yowl all over the end of "Terrorish"). And "Drumroll (We're All Thirsty)", the most immediate, throat-grabbing track on the album, is some straight-up hardcore get-in-the-pit business that lives up to its percussive title. But the majority of the album fits a wider array of rockish hip-hop beats and hip-hop-influenced rock rhythms: "Savion Glover" rides on an uptempo combination of minimalist electronic percussion, splintered guitar chords, and rapidfire scratching, and there's a slick, borderline-pop sound to lead single "Goodbye" and deep cut "Low Light Low Life"-- produced by Doomtree members Lazerbeak and Paper Tiger, respectively-- that pushes it to the level of college radio's most crowd-pleasing indie-rap offerings.

From front to back, the album's an acquired taste, and even if it's not the big paradox that an album mixing punk ethics with rap virtuosity might risk becoming, it doesn't have a universal appeal, especially for heads leery of anything that might approach the misnomer of "emo rap." But P.O.S. knows this, and he's apparently come to terms with it: "We make our own and if they don't feel it, then we are not for them," he sings in "Optimist (We Are Not For Them)". And then, almost as an aside, he adds: "And that's cool." He could be all things to all people, but he succeeds when he remembers who he is to himself.